Very, very early in the process.
Aug 082009
Aug 082009
At overly long last, it’s written and editted, and converted to PDF (took some doing to get it below 200 megabyteswithout trashing image quality… in the end got it down to 50+ meg). It will be made available sometime this weekend, after I upload it and tinker with the website appropriately. With some exciting new innovations in pricing, as well!
The two main articles are part two of two on the Bell D188A VTOL jet fighter, and part three of three on Project BoMi. With special guest stars Super Hustler, Fish, jet seplane bombers and more!
Aug 062009
I read this, and wondered, “where have I seen that before?”
“A walking helmet is a good helmet”
“Traffic safety isn’t just for cyclists. The pedestrians of Denmark actually have a higher risk of head injury. The Danish Road Safety Council recommends walking helmets for pedestrians and other good folk in high risk groups.”
It took me a minute or two, but I fianlly remembered: I saw it in the online graphic novel “Escape From Terra,” put out by Big Head Press.
It’s not, IMO, quite up to the standards of their “Probability Broach,” but it’s still entertaining. It’s a tale of a tax collector from Earth who sets off to the asteroid belt to bring the libertarian, freedom-loving asteroid miners into the loving embrace of Mother Earth (meaning: complete domination and complete taxation). And it looks like rather than being forward thinking, it might wind up being a bit behind the times.
Aug 062009
The new cameras ability to take long-exposure photos makes taking decent shots of lightning possible, so long as it’s lightning at night. One of the CHDK “hacks” for Canon allows for a “motion sensor” setting, where the camera will just stare at whatever until something moves, then snap a photo… and if that something that moved was a lightning bolt, then there ya go. But they don’t have one of those hacks for the SD960 yet.
Last night we had a hell of a lightning storm blow through. I set the camera on the tripod and tried to capture lightning via the expedient of pointing it in a likely direction and letting it take up to 15-second exposures. Unfortunately, after each exposure the camera needs to sit and process for a little while… the processing time being about the same as the exposure time. So fifteen seconds on, 15 seconds off. And no kidding, most of the good lightning strikes happened when the camera was processing. So what I got was way less than half of what I could’ve. Oh well.
Here’re the better ones. Note that in the parts of the photos where you can see moonlit clouds, there is a lot of motion blur. Stormclouds can move pretty far in a 2-second exposure, never mind a 15-second exposure.
Aug 062009
Or at least this little part of it. A few minutes ago, “Little Mountain,” about 5 miles south of here, looked like this:
Now it looks like this:
My first hint that something was amiss was when the light coming through the windows turned yellow. Now the smell of smoke has fully infiltrated the house, and ash is falling from the sky.
Last night and through around noon today we had a lot of lightning (more on that in a later post). But only a little rain. And we’ve not had any rain of consequence for a month or so. So… dry plus hot plus lightning equals wildfire. I called up the Corinne, UT, fire department and was told that it’s located at Fort Ranch, and is under control It is, nevertheless, creepy as hell. My neighbor almost lost a house in California to one of their incessant wildfires, and I am understandably a little dubious about the idea of my home being improved with combustion.
Fort Ranch is a dozen or more miles away, and between here and there are lush green farms and marshlands, so the likelihood of anything gettign this far is astronomically small. But I’m still getting a headache from the smell…
Aug 052009
Hanging out under the deck.
Aug 042009
Airplane Lockheed Prototype Concept Desk Display Model
We offer for auction a rare one off prototype model made by Lockheed from around the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. This model is made from painted wood, it has a 22″ wingspan & is approx. 16″ long. The propeller nose cones are aluminum & it has a wooden base with a slightly rusted steel support stem. There is a bronze plaque on the base that reads ” GL 136 B-1 Assault Transport Lockheed Aircraft Corp. Georgia Division Marietta Georgia” I think this was a proposal & never built, I cannot find any information about this aircraft. The model comes in it’s original wooden carrying case. The model when we found it was dirty, it also had some surface paint cracks were the tip tanks were mounted to the wings & some other areas. The markings which seemed to be hand painted were smudged in a couple of spots & a number of the prop blades were detached. We gave this model to a master model maker that made similar model for the airlines & the military. He cleaned it up & touched up the areas needing work. This was not a major job & it is almost impossible to see any restoration. This is a beautiful professional design model & one of a kind model. The wooden carrying case measures approx. 28″ x 20″ x 12″ & is quite heavy.
Less than a day left as of this writing.
Aug 042009
A design effort in 1963 produced a series of space station designs launchable atop the Titan III, much like the Manned Orbiting Lab (available documentation does not call them that, but it’s possible that they might have been meant to fill that role). One of
the designs was the Model 934-103, which was a simple cylindrical can 12 feet in diameter. For servicing and logistics, two Boeing Dyna Soar-derived vehicles could dock. It appears that the station itself is not equipped with an airlock; instead, the airlock to the Dyna Soars would be in the Dyna Soar adapter sections. Presumably the station would still nevertheless be equipped with redundant pressure doors… you’d hate to have your station blow down because of a leak in the seal around a single door.
If you like the sort of aerospace history stuff I post, you can support the cause by Buying My Stuff, which includes aerospace drawings and documents, as well as the journal of unbuilt aircraft and spacecraft projects, Aerospace Projects Review. Or you could just Donate. To the right for more posts like this, click on the Unwanted Blog header up top and then click on the “Projects” tag to the right.
Aug 042009
While the Canon SD960 has let me down by deleting the low-compression “superfine” image storing capability – meaning that every photo has JPG compression artifacts – they partially made up for it by adding a long exposure setting to the camera. It can now take pics up to 15 seconds. I gave this a shot last night on a moon-lit, partially cloudy night. Apart from the compression issues (BAH!), they came out pretty well. Certainly none of the freakin’ *cloud* of hot pixels that plagued the older camera. Wasn’t quite as appealing a night for photography as the last time I tried this, but still there were some interesting results.
Aug 032009
Apollo 1960’S Space Ship Desk Model General Dynamics
FROM AN OLD TEXAS ESTATE, UP FOR AUCTION: back in the mid- 70’S, I purchased this hand built scratch model of a lunar takeoff vehicle by General Dynamics Corp, made sometime circa mid 1960s. Created for the department heads and certain persons directly involved with this particular aspect of this particular space program. AS FAR AS I KNOW, Not ever offered for public or private sale, THE ITEM IS MADE OF Wood , aluminum AND SOME OTHER HARDEN PLASTIC TYPE MATERIAL (NOT SURE), this is not your standard plastic desk model. Approx. H: 16.5″ . The approx. dia: 5 1/2″, THE BASE PLATE IS APPROX. 6 1/2 WIDE. There is some normal wear and AGEING as shown, BUT OVERALL THIS IS A GREAT MODEL, and one not seen very often on the open market . It is indeed a rare item , THE BASE comes apart and each part will be wrapped seperate and shipped to the winner.( PLEASE SEE PICTURES ). The item is being listing with no reserve.
I WAS IN THE U.S. A.F. DURING THE TIME PERIOD THE MOON LANDING PROJECTS MERCURY, GEMINI AND APOLLO WERE TAKING PLACE, ALTHOUGH I WAS NOT ASSIGNED TO THE PROGRAMS I WAS FROM TIME TO TIME IN DIRECT SUPPORT FOR EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES.. I HAD GREAT INTEREST AND WAS PROUD OF AMERICANS NEW MISSION OF GOING TO THE MOON AND BACK WITH LIVE PEOPLE. THROUGHOUT THE YEARS I HAVE COLLECTED A FEW ITEMS FROM THAT TIME PERIOD. I HAVE VERY LITTLE DIRECT INFORMATION ON THIS SPACE SHIP MODEL EXCEPT FROM THE INTERNET AND THERE IS A SMALL LABEL ATTACHED TO THE THE WOODEN BASE OF THE MODEL THAT READS , APOLLO PHASE C General Dynamics ASTRONAUTICS – AVCO LUNAR TAKEOFF SPACECRAFT.
This one at least is not a mystery… The Convair M-1